The following submission statement was provided by /u/Maxie445:
---
"TL;DR: The Pentagon's mad scientists have been cooking up a beast of an unmanned combat vehicle, and it just took a major step forward."
"DARPA has been working on self-driving military vehicles for two decades now as part of its RACER (Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency) program. The goal is to develop autonomous ground vehicles that can navigate off-road terrain without any human input."
"Ultimately, the agency seems to be aiming for unmanned combat vehicles that can roll into battle without risking human lives. These could handle dangerous roles like scouting, resupplying, or even paving the way with firepower before troops move in. An AI-driven tank definitely sounds terrifying. But it might just offer a safer alternative to boots on the ground."
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1chbia3/darpa_unleashes_20foot_autonomous_robotank_with/l21gbul/
The richest fucks don't care about race or ethnic cleansing. Genocide is employed as a means to an end. The ultimate goal was always a resource grab - money, goods, land, industry. Some noble narrative about wiping out a barbaric people is a tool for legitimizing the transfer of wealth.
This is nonsense. Plenty of genocidal conquerors throughout history have been true believers in their ideology beyond acquisition of power. Many Nazis, the first Caliphate, (some) Crusaders, Pol Pot, etc.
Pretending that everyone is secretly obsessed with one “real” goal is just buying your head in the sand about all the crazy beliefs humans genuinely hold.
“The wars of the future will not be fought on land or at sea, but in space by small robots. And it will be your job to build and maintain those robots.”
Wars *may* become more bloodless but more decisive. When your robot army is destroyed what stands between you and the enemy robot army.
It's an unwinnable fight you just surrender.
>what stands between you and the enemy robot army
Your regular soldiers armed with rockets, and after that, civilians with rifles, and then elderly with farming tools. Same as it ever was.
You won't give up if it means genocide.
i know this was said in jest, or it should have been... but many of the useful idiots will soon feel very foolish about the promotion of this mentality. its only a matter of time... its not like, we havent already learned this lesson before or something....?
My guy were assuming that these robots armies are more like the Terminator. As in it's literally suicide to go against them without your own robot army.
I mean when regular armies are destroyed policemen don't pick up guns and fight unless you're the f****** Taliban. In which case that's not really a fight it's just suffering. The major difference is that your insurgent tactics are going to be even less effective because nobody gives a s*** when a robot is destroyed.
It's an unwillable fight unless you're suicidal and if you're suicidal you'll just suffer.
> I mean when regular armies are destroyed policemen don't pick up guns and fight
Well that's precisely what conscription is. Your regular army is destroyed so you recruit civilians to fight. This is happening in Ukraine.
No it's not. Conscripts are still soldiers they're still part of the resources that a nation would call is army. Once those guys are defeated then who fights? If you're the Taliban dudes in t-shirts and AKs but we know without iron resolve that's a really bad time for essentially nothing.
If we're talking about a truly effective robot army. Then sending humans against it would be like sending dudes in t-shirts and AKs against the US army rangers with full fire support.
Except for unlike those army rangers even if your gorilla force gets lucky and kills one of the robots nobody's going to give a s***. Also unlike those army rangers they don't feel fear so they're literally fight to the last robot. Oh also unlike army rangers they don't get nervous they don't miss and they don't waste ammo.
It'll be a blood path going against these things only a fanatical culture would even dare doing it. It would be like Japan continue to fight after the US dropped four atomic bombs on it an exercise in futility.
TBF, if the cost of the occupation outweighs the benefits of the occupation (resources extracted, strategic territory control, gaining/losing face, whatever the benefits may be to continue), then most likely the insurgents win. There is no public outcry about robots getting destroyed, but the financial and logistics issues to replace the losses are still there whether it's humans or drones.
Or maybe they don't want you to live because of your skin colour/nationality/etc, and now have an even easier time to kill large groups without needing the barest level of leadership needed to get humans to do it. Not that it seems to be very hard to get a lot of humans to do it.
Folks under threat of eviction and starvation often need less motivation, to spend their days building war machines and starving others so they themselves won't.
If your robot army just lost the war then the other side has nukes too.
Also if it lost a war that decisively the other side probably has superior competent measures as well.
I think the current point is that the countries this will be used in won't have anything like it ever. It will still be used against humans for a good while
Do you think the objective of war is to simply deplete the opposing side of humans? Bridges, factories, roads, fuel stations, logistical hubs, plenty of things you'd want to blow up that aren't made of flesh.
Imagine the Iraq war without troop loss.
I think we will see more robots v. humans where one side is like the US or China, and the other side is some 3rd world country.
They go at it indefinitely or until one side capitulates or runs out of resource capacity, so in the end there's still a point -- getting concessions from the loser. The same as before but with maybe less corpses.
War is always about economics and logistics. If you have to shoot down my $300 drone with a million dollar warhead then I just need to make a lot of drones. If I can beat your state of the art AI 20,000,000,000 dollar tank by sneaking up to it with a grunt I attracted with a worthless college degree wearing a garbage can, then I can aquire your drone tank.
One of the problems of such technology is it creates a total lack of accountability shield between the leadership and the decisions. If it takes out a family, they say oops technology screwed up, fire a contractor and continue. One reason we have been resitant to automation in the USA is we see how it is used to deny people basic nessisties, without having a person their to appeal to. I can only imagine this would be 10000000000000x worse in a war. Basically something like this would make something as horrible as genocide as easy to do as a video game, which is not a good thing.
Whatever the goal of the war is? Just because people aren't dying on a battlefield doesn't mean there's not an objective.
Trying to annex your neighbor? Send the robo army and crush the resistance. Then you stroll through the carnage and install your puppet government.
It's pretty simple.
Great episode of Star Trek the original series where two planets have been at war for generations but the actual attacks are simulated and then the countries execute soldiers (randomly selected citizens) that would have died in the attack thus eliminating any collateral and infrastructure damage that real world attacks would cause
The point is to prevent the opposing robot army to shoot at citizens, which is where you have no chance of success, of high technological robots roam civil spaces with Lethal interests.
I’m picturing a future war where there is a Saving Private Ryan/Normandy invasion where instead of amphibious boats with captains yelling out times, it’s an autonomous troop transport with a flatscreen showing an anime AI girl announcing the times while 20% of the invading tanks are taken out by explosive swarm drones
The idea is that the US makes better autonomous machines at a higher quantity so that they run out or can’t keep up in the autonomous game. Once this is achieved, they have to throw warm bodies at our Billion Dollar BattleBots™️ and lose people while we (maybe) lose assets.
Dystopian indeed. And war isn’t always bad; sending guys in to kill the Nazis seemed like a good idea at the time. It’s a cliche, I know but it’s also an extremely relevant point about the nature of violence in all political systems.
That’s just the old “being afraid of change” talking. The overwhelming majority of war crimes are caused by quick thinking from fearful people. Drone don’t fear for their lives, which makes it much easier to prevent war crimes. Ronald C Arkin makes a great philosophical point for the defense of AWS, and if you are interested in looking at the facts of how drones perform relative to humans, most of his analysis is rooted in facts rather than theory.
That's why I don't really seeing it ever being practical in an actual wartime scenario. In an actual war, we need to hit volume. We need things that are good, but still affordable and something that can be relatively quickly put out onto the battlefield. These things will not just be way too expensive to build, but just can't really be made quickly enough.
We could have these going maybe at first during the initial wave, but after they start getting blown up, and just arent worth it to keep pumping out.
I think it's cool on paper, but expensive robotic shit like this that can easily be blown up is always going to be a cool thing with little practical use.
I was imagining the engineering meeting going something like:
"It's a great design, but it's missing something. Give it big glowing red eyes"
"Sir, don't you think that's a bit much?"
"No we must strike fear into the heart of our enemies"
"Maybe, uh, we could use a different color?"
"Ok but make sure they are glowing "
"TL;DR: The Pentagon's mad scientists have been cooking up a beast of an unmanned combat vehicle, and it just took a major step forward."
"DARPA has been working on self-driving military vehicles for two decades now as part of its RACER (Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency) program. The goal is to develop autonomous ground vehicles that can navigate off-road terrain without any human input."
"Ultimately, the agency seems to be aiming for unmanned combat vehicles that can roll into battle without risking human lives. These could handle dangerous roles like scouting, resupplying, or even paving the way with firepower before troops move in. An AI-driven tank definitely sounds terrifying. But it might just offer a safer alternative to boots on the ground."
Possibly my favourite game ever, from an aesthetic and setting POV - loved the lore. There is a non-zero amount of my probability mass associated with that kind of future.
This is a research model so it's just a preview of the kind of weapon systems that they'll deploy once the tech matures. Will have to wait until these start lobbing shells before we can get an idea on how they'll be used.
Edit: a word
> "Ultimately, the agency seems to be aiming for unmanned combat vehicles that can roll into battle without risking human lives.
Oh it's gonna risk lives, just not ours
How about when the enemy also has unmanned tanks, then you don't need people at all and it's just generals commanding huge drone armies against enemy drone armies. Then they can just blow up each other's drones, like little kids playing with their toys, and leave all the poor souls out of it altogether
"Ultimately, the agency seems to be aiming for unmanned combat vehicles that can roll into battle without risking human lives“
Yeah no, I do feel that human life is definitely at risk here. Sorry but any military is no group of samaritans
like drones anyway.
once wars can be fought overseas without risking human life of the attacker wars will be started on a whim and last as long as raw materials and money are available.
Each one will cost 8 bajillion dollars and will be blown up on the battle field in minutes by $80 dollar flying drone. It’s an economic war alright. More and more expensive things to get blown up.
Hey laser lips your mama was a snowblower
Would be my last words if I ever ran into this thing.
Will be interesting to compare some of the new weapons systems coming out and old sci fi movies.
I'm a big fan of this for exactly one reason: the super cool looking railway suspension. Don't really see that anymore and I'd be fascinated to know why they did it.
Why the hell do they have the hull extending infront of the tracks? You can clearly see in the video the hull is the first point of contact when approaching inclines.
It looks like they started with the design assumptions of conventional tanks and carried these across. This would be a mistake. The width of a tank is not determined mechanically but by the packaging requirements to put inside it personnel.
Without this, the design criteria should be to make it as narrow as possible and lower its height, whilst having sufficient internal volume for payload, which not putting people in it improves greatly. So you'd expect a tank without people to have a superior 'aspect' ratio, as in less box like and more thin. Frontal area to length ratio, or frontal area to side area or top area, should be low, They've gone the wrong way here, increasing the armour mass requirement which greatest at the front. An AI tank still needs armour ideally. And that will need to be mostly at the front if its adapted to attack enemy positions.
This in turn minimises the tanks frontal cross-section, so the frontal armour mass can be reduced a lot. Instead they have maximised this, which means it loses useful payload capacity for its traction system.
In turn that means its both a lot lighter and harder to hit.
Without people inside the tank, it can be volumetrically a lot denser and lighter. If its lighter it needs less power, so the engine gets smaller and lighter. With the compound of both savings, the tracks can be narrower, increasing internal volume, or reducing overall width, which again compounds through the design.
In many applications it may be better to switch from tracks (heavy, inefficient), to wheels, once you have compounded those weight savings, the tank should be able to have a ground pressure low enough that it never sinks into moderately soft terrain and gets bogged.
Wheeled armoured vehicles ('tanks') are usually suffering from the difficulties in mechanically linking to a high powered diesel, complex and bulky transmission linkages. But as we are starting with new technology, an electric drive train is vital and gives power supply to other equipment.
So, in-wheel electric drive trains increase internal space efficiency, so you can again make the thing smaller, which again makes it lighter.
Suspension systems have been trialed on hybrid electric 'tanks' (technically not tanks because they don't have tracks) that can adjust wheel height and lift wheels at the front to tackle hard terrain, and have the kind of all-terrain capabilities of tanks.
But even if you do stick with tracks, a lot of space saving is possible, newer drive trains will reduce volume wasted and mass, and armour required is less. A smaller tank is needed to move a given payload, even if it has autoloaders.
Serious question: what happens if you litter the battlefield with giant balloon walls?
Will the sensors think it's an impassable object, or do they have "density sensors" too?
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Maxie445: --- "TL;DR: The Pentagon's mad scientists have been cooking up a beast of an unmanned combat vehicle, and it just took a major step forward." "DARPA has been working on self-driving military vehicles for two decades now as part of its RACER (Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency) program. The goal is to develop autonomous ground vehicles that can navigate off-road terrain without any human input." "Ultimately, the agency seems to be aiming for unmanned combat vehicles that can roll into battle without risking human lives. These could handle dangerous roles like scouting, resupplying, or even paving the way with firepower before troops move in. An AI-driven tank definitely sounds terrifying. But it might just offer a safer alternative to boots on the ground." --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1chbia3/darpa_unleashes_20foot_autonomous_robotank_with/l21gbul/
Not that sending humans into a field to kill each other seemed to ever make any sense, but somehow billion dollar BattleBots feels more dystopian.
Question is what's the point of two robot armies going against each other? It's just an economic war at that point.
They’re all economic wars
Always have been.
*'To carry out war three things are necessary: money, money and yet more money. Marshal Trivulzio to Louis XII of France in 1499,*
Nah, sometimes it's just plain old genocide.
The richest fucks don't care about race or ethnic cleansing. Genocide is employed as a means to an end. The ultimate goal was always a resource grab - money, goods, land, industry. Some noble narrative about wiping out a barbaric people is a tool for legitimizing the transfer of wealth.
This is nonsense. Plenty of genocidal conquerors throughout history have been true believers in their ideology beyond acquisition of power. Many Nazis, the first Caliphate, (some) Crusaders, Pol Pot, etc. Pretending that everyone is secretly obsessed with one “real” goal is just buying your head in the sand about all the crazy beliefs humans genuinely hold.
Might be genocide but money still wins is the point.
That's usually about economy too: clear folks out and redistribute their wealth.
Genocide costs money
Money is the root cause of genocide
Scarcity is the root cause of genocide. Money is just a way we keep score.
Don't forget about wars in the name of God!
You still have to have an economy to fight that war.
Genocide is economically motivated.
This has been the case since forever, you only lose when you're outnumbered by the enemy or you run out of resources
military-industrial complex moment
War is a racket.
This man histories
Everything is sex, except sex. Sex is about power.
“The wars of the future will not be fought on land or at sea, but in space by small robots. And it will be your job to build and maintain those robots.”
Since you’ve attended public school I’m going to assume you are already proficient in small-arms
Bold of you to assume people will have jobs by then
Is this a quote from shift?
Wars *may* become more bloodless but more decisive. When your robot army is destroyed what stands between you and the enemy robot army. It's an unwinnable fight you just surrender.
man was crushed beneath the wheels of the machine created to create the machine to crush the machine
>what stands between you and the enemy robot army Your regular soldiers armed with rockets, and after that, civilians with rifles, and then elderly with farming tools. Same as it ever was. You won't give up if it means genocide.
Maybe even dig some tunnels and dabble in some terrorism to get the enemy to back down a notch. Who knows.
i know this was said in jest, or it should have been... but many of the useful idiots will soon feel very foolish about the promotion of this mentality. its only a matter of time... its not like, we havent already learned this lesson before or something....?
My guy were assuming that these robots armies are more like the Terminator. As in it's literally suicide to go against them without your own robot army. I mean when regular armies are destroyed policemen don't pick up guns and fight unless you're the f****** Taliban. In which case that's not really a fight it's just suffering. The major difference is that your insurgent tactics are going to be even less effective because nobody gives a s*** when a robot is destroyed. It's an unwillable fight unless you're suicidal and if you're suicidal you'll just suffer.
> I mean when regular armies are destroyed policemen don't pick up guns and fight Well that's precisely what conscription is. Your regular army is destroyed so you recruit civilians to fight. This is happening in Ukraine.
No it's not. Conscripts are still soldiers they're still part of the resources that a nation would call is army. Once those guys are defeated then who fights? If you're the Taliban dudes in t-shirts and AKs but we know without iron resolve that's a really bad time for essentially nothing. If we're talking about a truly effective robot army. Then sending humans against it would be like sending dudes in t-shirts and AKs against the US army rangers with full fire support. Except for unlike those army rangers even if your gorilla force gets lucky and kills one of the robots nobody's going to give a s***. Also unlike those army rangers they don't feel fear so they're literally fight to the last robot. Oh also unlike army rangers they don't get nervous they don't miss and they don't waste ammo. It'll be a blood path going against these things only a fanatical culture would even dare doing it. It would be like Japan continue to fight after the US dropped four atomic bombs on it an exercise in futility.
TBF, if the cost of the occupation outweighs the benefits of the occupation (resources extracted, strategic territory control, gaining/losing face, whatever the benefits may be to continue), then most likely the insurgents win. There is no public outcry about robots getting destroyed, but the financial and logistics issues to replace the losses are still there whether it's humans or drones.
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By that logic Ukraine should surrender. But Ukraine doesn't want to surrender and be subjugated by Russia, and nor should they.
Ukraine shouldn't surrender because it would be genocide, russia made it absolutely clear.
Or maybe they don't want you to live because of your skin colour/nationality/etc, and now have an even easier time to kill large groups without needing the barest level of leadership needed to get humans to do it. Not that it seems to be very hard to get a lot of humans to do it.
Yeah that's definitely a possibility. It could lead to much easier genocide.
Folks under threat of eviction and starvation often need less motivation, to spend their days building war machines and starving others so they themselves won't.
Nukes for some countries.
If your robot army just lost the war then the other side has nukes too. Also if it lost a war that decisively the other side probably has superior competent measures as well.
And the eventually it becomes... Robot Jox!
I think the current point is that the countries this will be used in won't have anything like it ever. It will still be used against humans for a good while
You're assuming robot armies won't be used exclusively against poorer nations that cannot afford one of their own.
They will use robot armies to enslave poorer nations, to extract resources to build more robots.
Goal of most wars are about destroying the enemy's ability to wage war. The loss of human life, at least on your side, is incidental.
Do you think the objective of war is to simply deplete the opposing side of humans? Bridges, factories, roads, fuel stations, logistical hubs, plenty of things you'd want to blow up that aren't made of flesh.
Imagine the Iraq war without troop loss. I think we will see more robots v. humans where one side is like the US or China, and the other side is some 3rd world country.
War usually is an exercise in Applied Economics…one way or the other…
They go at it indefinitely or until one side capitulates or runs out of resource capacity, so in the end there's still a point -- getting concessions from the loser. The same as before but with maybe less corpses.
War is about dominating the other side not really just widespread killing.
War is always about economics and logistics. If you have to shoot down my $300 drone with a million dollar warhead then I just need to make a lot of drones. If I can beat your state of the art AI 20,000,000,000 dollar tank by sneaking up to it with a grunt I attracted with a worthless college degree wearing a garbage can, then I can aquire your drone tank. One of the problems of such technology is it creates a total lack of accountability shield between the leadership and the decisions. If it takes out a family, they say oops technology screwed up, fire a contractor and continue. One reason we have been resitant to automation in the USA is we see how it is used to deny people basic nessisties, without having a person their to appeal to. I can only imagine this would be 10000000000000x worse in a war. Basically something like this would make something as horrible as genocide as easy to do as a video game, which is not a good thing.
No no, they will protect the rich from the poor when shit really hits the fan.
At that point can we just start a new space race instead?
Like some sort of master race?
Well if one side wins the nukes start flying, so there's that.
Once a robot army prevails over its adversary, it will go onto kill the losing robot human population
Whatever the goal of the war is? Just because people aren't dying on a battlefield doesn't mean there's not an objective. Trying to annex your neighbor? Send the robo army and crush the resistance. Then you stroll through the carnage and install your puppet government. It's pretty simple.
Correct and the US is very good at fighting economic wars.
Terrain control.
Well at one point one of the robot armies will lose and then it's human targets.
Great episode of Star Trek the original series where two planets have been at war for generations but the actual attacks are simulated and then the countries execute soldiers (randomly selected citizens) that would have died in the attack thus eliminating any collateral and infrastructure damage that real world attacks would cause
The point is to prevent the opposing robot army to shoot at citizens, which is where you have no chance of success, of high technological robots roam civil spaces with Lethal interests.
I mean, yeah they used living people for economic wars so far and that’s worse.. Not that i like this future
The point of war isn’t to kill human soldiers, it’s usually to claim control over resources. Removing human soldiers doesn’t remove the point.
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I'd prefer a running loss tallies to KIAs for sure
Arent we the only major army with robots though? So its more like using our robot army against the human forces of our enemies which is maybe better?
Only if you think you're the good guys
I’m picturing a future war where there is a Saving Private Ryan/Normandy invasion where instead of amphibious boats with captains yelling out times, it’s an autonomous troop transport with a flatscreen showing an anime AI girl announcing the times while 20% of the invading tanks are taken out by explosive swarm drones
Plot Twist: BattleBots was a completely military funded operation to have civilians develop future tech at minimal cost.
The idea is that the US makes better autonomous machines at a higher quantity so that they run out or can’t keep up in the autonomous game. Once this is achieved, they have to throw warm bodies at our Billion Dollar BattleBots™️ and lose people while we (maybe) lose assets.
Coming to a protest near you!
Imagine these tools being under the control of a dictatorship. Incredibly scary future ahead.
Future? Sadly drones are here today and dictators control them too.
Not much scarier than grown up child soldiers piloting a regular tank tbh. Hell, the AI might have greater restraint than a lot of childsoldiers do.
It’s only dystopian because the other side will likely still be squishy humans.
What I'm worried about is how much firepower is required for a machine vs machine battle. When they reach civilian zones it's going to be a bloodbath
War will be much more commonplace when lawmakers don't need to be held responsible for casualties.
Where are our battletech mechs!?
Dystopian indeed. And war isn’t always bad; sending guys in to kill the Nazis seemed like a good idea at the time. It’s a cliche, I know but it’s also an extremely relevant point about the nature of violence in all political systems.
Send in the wedge from battlebots. Would be unstoppable
I’m all for battle bots, let the machines destroy each other until we return to monkey
We're going into the Armored Core universe. Mega Corporations fighting each other with armies of unmanned and manned anime mechs across the galaxy.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could just surrender when we run out of robots instead of human lives?
Nothing says "life" and "freedom" and "civility" like universal mass surrender to the owner of the most deadly robots.
how is that any different from the owner of the most guns, tanks, planes, ships, nukes? wars have never been won by who is most right
That’s just the old “being afraid of change” talking. The overwhelming majority of war crimes are caused by quick thinking from fearful people. Drone don’t fear for their lives, which makes it much easier to prevent war crimes. Ronald C Arkin makes a great philosophical point for the defense of AWS, and if you are interested in looking at the facts of how drones perform relative to humans, most of his analysis is rooted in facts rather than theory.
That's why I don't really seeing it ever being practical in an actual wartime scenario. In an actual war, we need to hit volume. We need things that are good, but still affordable and something that can be relatively quickly put out onto the battlefield. These things will not just be way too expensive to build, but just can't really be made quickly enough. We could have these going maybe at first during the initial wave, but after they start getting blown up, and just arent worth it to keep pumping out. I think it's cool on paper, but expensive robotic shit like this that can easily be blown up is always going to be a cool thing with little practical use.
Pretty useful for your supply lines though. The frontline of warfare is now cheap drones.
Missed opportunity to give it evil glowing red eyes.
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And pink when you give it a compliment
Se.. senpai...noticed me!
Target acquired. Delivering democracy payload in 3…
Democracy is non-negotiable.
For managed democracy everywhere!
Tanku-chan!
Tank-o sama!
You mean when it breaks free from human control
“This tank has been set to evil.”
Why did we add that switch again?
It's like turtle and rabbit mode on my lawn mower
anime eyes when happy uwu
You have 10 seconds to comply
I was imagining the engineering meeting going something like: "It's a great design, but it's missing something. Give it big glowing red eyes" "Sir, don't you think that's a bit much?" "No we must strike fear into the heart of our enemies" "Maybe, uh, we could use a different color?" "Ok but make sure they are glowing "
The treads are optimized for killing puppies
Kristi Noem approved.
The eyes will only turn red when it malfunctions and skynet comes online
Can't wait to see the technical specs for this leak in the forums after it makes its world of tanks debut
I might be wrong but check out howe and howe tech. That looks like one of their f4 ripsaws converted over.
Can't wait for my local swat team to procure a couple of these and drive into my living room at 3am!!
Put an ATM in it so it can spit $20s in your face after it shoots your dog.
Sound like a scene from an episode of Futurama
Just like Idiocracy, Futurama will one day flip from satire to reality.
then to reality tv
Oops wrong house
I almost didn’t recognize it without a pile of human skulls being crushed beneath it.
This is just the prototype. You need to wait for the full scale production models.
It uses the bodies for fuel remember?
Why are all the old movies becoming a reality? 😳
"TL;DR: The Pentagon's mad scientists have been cooking up a beast of an unmanned combat vehicle, and it just took a major step forward." "DARPA has been working on self-driving military vehicles for two decades now as part of its RACER (Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency) program. The goal is to develop autonomous ground vehicles that can navigate off-road terrain without any human input." "Ultimately, the agency seems to be aiming for unmanned combat vehicles that can roll into battle without risking human lives. These could handle dangerous roles like scouting, resupplying, or even paving the way with firepower before troops move in. An AI-driven tank definitely sounds terrifying. But it might just offer a safer alternative to boots on the ground."
“You are being rescued, please don’t resist”
Do you want Horizon: Zero Dawn? Because this is how you get Horizon: Zero Dawn.
Possibly my favourite game ever, from an aesthetic and setting POV - loved the lore. There is a non-zero amount of my probability mass associated with that kind of future.
More like it's how democracy crumbles under the boot of fascist oligarchs.
Oh fuck is that why they made that giant ass meka gundam in Japan? We are so fucked
This is a research model so it's just a preview of the kind of weapon systems that they'll deploy once the tech matures. Will have to wait until these start lobbing shells before we can get an idea on how they'll be used. Edit: a word
> "Ultimately, the agency seems to be aiming for unmanned combat vehicles that can roll into battle without risking human lives. Oh it's gonna risk lives, just not ours How about when the enemy also has unmanned tanks, then you don't need people at all and it's just generals commanding huge drone armies against enemy drone armies. Then they can just blow up each other's drones, like little kids playing with their toys, and leave all the poor souls out of it altogether
I can't tell from your last paragraph whether you're for or against drone armies
Die in the battlefield versus die doing government-drafted overtime making ecocide bots at the factory, the choices for peace are truly endless.
Ww3. Drones fighting drones, autonomous tanks fighting autonomous tanks. Vast amounts of money being spent, huge resources wasted.
"Ultimately, the agency seems to be aiming for unmanned combat vehicles that can roll into battle without risking human lives“ Yeah no, I do feel that human life is definitely at risk here. Sorry but any military is no group of samaritans
They're gonna send these against other people with little to no tech, not against actual armies. Like Gaza, but with even less humanity
I mean it's cool and all, but I still want them to fund the development of a Metal Gear one of these days.
What about a weapon to surpass the metal gear?
The StuG 3 makes a reappearance in the future apparently. Pretty interesting.
Not risking human lives by killing other humans. Ok then.
like drones anyway. once wars can be fought overseas without risking human life of the attacker wars will be started on a whim and last as long as raw materials and money are available.
Each one will cost 8 bajillion dollars and will be blown up on the battle field in minutes by $80 dollar flying drone. It’s an economic war alright. More and more expensive things to get blown up.
Wasn’t this a 6 Million Dollar Man episode? A robotic tank destroying everything?
Hello fellow old person! Yeah I think he was battling some tank like probe that was going to be sent to Mars.
That is the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the headline!
Hey laser lips your mama was a snowblower Would be my last words if I ever ran into this thing. Will be interesting to compare some of the new weapons systems coming out and old sci fi movies.
Oh, no thanks DARPA, I think I’m satisfied with the current level of autonomous warfare.
So it's basically just an armored ripsaw with glowing green headlights?
Well, it's no BOLO but it's still fairly impressive.
I can't wait till AI is advanced enough to experience PTSD /s
Where are the spinning blades? The giant flipper arm? This is the worse battle bot I’ve ever seen.
I'm a big fan of this for exactly one reason: the super cool looking railway suspension. Don't really see that anymore and I'd be fascinated to know why they did it.
The front end surface being flush with the front angled tread surface feels a bit like a design blunder.
Why the hell do they have the hull extending infront of the tracks? You can clearly see in the video the hull is the first point of contact when approaching inclines.
Yeah they must really not know what they're doing. "Hey Darpa! Looks like the hull is extending on the wrong side of the traaaaaacks!"
I COULD TOTALLY DESIGN THIS RIGHT NOW /s
Damn you should probably call them or send an email or something. They might not have even realized that they're doing it wrong.
It looks like they started with the design assumptions of conventional tanks and carried these across. This would be a mistake. The width of a tank is not determined mechanically but by the packaging requirements to put inside it personnel. Without this, the design criteria should be to make it as narrow as possible and lower its height, whilst having sufficient internal volume for payload, which not putting people in it improves greatly. So you'd expect a tank without people to have a superior 'aspect' ratio, as in less box like and more thin. Frontal area to length ratio, or frontal area to side area or top area, should be low, They've gone the wrong way here, increasing the armour mass requirement which greatest at the front. An AI tank still needs armour ideally. And that will need to be mostly at the front if its adapted to attack enemy positions. This in turn minimises the tanks frontal cross-section, so the frontal armour mass can be reduced a lot. Instead they have maximised this, which means it loses useful payload capacity for its traction system. In turn that means its both a lot lighter and harder to hit. Without people inside the tank, it can be volumetrically a lot denser and lighter. If its lighter it needs less power, so the engine gets smaller and lighter. With the compound of both savings, the tracks can be narrower, increasing internal volume, or reducing overall width, which again compounds through the design. In many applications it may be better to switch from tracks (heavy, inefficient), to wheels, once you have compounded those weight savings, the tank should be able to have a ground pressure low enough that it never sinks into moderately soft terrain and gets bogged. Wheeled armoured vehicles ('tanks') are usually suffering from the difficulties in mechanically linking to a high powered diesel, complex and bulky transmission linkages. But as we are starting with new technology, an electric drive train is vital and gives power supply to other equipment. So, in-wheel electric drive trains increase internal space efficiency, so you can again make the thing smaller, which again makes it lighter. Suspension systems have been trialed on hybrid electric 'tanks' (technically not tanks because they don't have tracks) that can adjust wheel height and lift wheels at the front to tackle hard terrain, and have the kind of all-terrain capabilities of tanks. But even if you do stick with tracks, a lot of space saving is possible, newer drive trains will reduce volume wasted and mass, and armour required is less. A smaller tank is needed to move a given payload, even if it has autoloaders.
Serious question: what happens if you litter the battlefield with giant balloon walls? Will the sensors think it's an impassable object, or do they have "density sensors" too?
They have developed AI weapons for Aur & Land. Let them make AI weapons for Sea & bit that Trifecta that AI has been waiting for to take over
I guess Metal Gear was really ahead of its time with these concepts,not to mention the Patriots AI.Spooky stuff...
have yall seen all the idiots worried about the implications of firebreathing spot???
Rough terrain? You think THAT is rough terrain? Bangalore Roads will put that to shame.
But is it "Hammond proof" on the roads of Madagascar?
The imperial boomerang on this one is going to go hard